Saturday, June 10, 2017

No Title (A Turreted Berg)

Look, it is breaking loose
from the glacier's face,
from the glacier's foot.
O yes, it is white,
it moves, O yes,
it is larger than anything
moving on the waters,
in the air,
or on the face of the earth.

Mortal dreams,
traversed by a caravan
of icebergs:
"Looming over the ocean,
more than two hundred and fifty feet high,
its surfaces, freshly fractured,
reflect the light
in hues and tints
of wonderful transparency."
"It is as if the sun's fire
were mirrored
in the windowpanes
of a hundred palaces."

It is better
not to think of the weight
of the iceberg.
He who has witnessed it,
will hardly ever forget
the sight of it, if he lives
for a long time to come.

"It is an exalting spectacle,
but it also inspires the heart
of the beholder
with a feeling
of secret dread."

For the iceberg
there is no future.
It floats on.
We have no use
for the iceberg.
It is indubitable.
There is no money in it.
Cosiness
is not its forte.
It dwarfs us.
We never see more of it
than the tip.

It is perishable.
It does not care.
It does not make progress,
but "when,
not unlike a monstrous
white marble slate
mottled with bluish veins,
it suddenly tilts and crashes down,
the ocean will tremble."

It is none of our business,
it will drift on in silence,
it needs nothing,
it has no offspring,
it melts away.
It leaves nothing behind.
It disappears to perfection.
Yes, that's the word for it:
perfection.

– from The Sinking of the Titanic: A Poem (1980) by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

COMRADES OF TIME

"Hesitation with regard to the modern projects mainly has to do with a growing disbelief in their promises. Classical modernity believed in the ability of the future to realize the promises of past and present – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. The notion of a permanent art collection says it all: archive, library and museum promised secular permanency, a material infinitude that substituted for the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity, the 'body of work' replaced the soul as the potentially immortal part of the Self. . . . But today, this promise of an infinite future holding the results of our work has lost its plausibility. Museums have become the sites of temporary exhibitions rather than spaces for permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable."